Issues 19:10 Messianic Jewish Artists

Jewish painter Camille Pissarro, a father figure to the impressionists, said, “Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.” The three Jewish artists featured in this edition must be blessed. Using different media—photography, painting and drawing—each of them finds beauty in natural surroundings and in the everyday people they encounter. Their work reflects the beauty not only of creation, but of the Creator. Here are their stories…

A motorcycle accident at age 28 left David Farber with one functioning limb—his right arm—and one functioning eye and ear. But it didn’t deter his passion for travel and photography. He has journeyed to Alaska and Africa to photograph everything from moose to wildebeest to hippos. Before the accident, Farber was an avid hiker. “My […]

“The greatest hindrance to creativity,” says painter and photographer Will Rosenberg, “is worrying what others think. If you walk into a kindergarten class and say, ‘Who here is an artist?’ every kid will raise their hand. A couple of years later the percentages go down. By the time kids get to college, nobody’s an artist, […]

Judy (Joseph) Burger has seen a lot of the United States—much of it by accident. At age eighteen, she got lost hitchhiking to a communal farm in Illinois and ended up in California! She has also lived on Washboard Way off of Dead Dog Drive in Atmore, Alabama. Along the way, she attended art school, […]

Shelley Skoropinski, 63, was raised in a Conservative Jewish home in Philadelphia. She grew up in a Jewish neighborhood and was bat mitzvah. Her father, Irvin Korotkin, passed away when Shelley was sixteen. Her older sister, Lana, read the New Testament and at age 21 came to believe in Jesus. Lana prayed for her family […]

Rebecca Redinger, 26, grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, in a Messianic Jewish home in which both her Jewish mother and gentile father believed in Jesus. They raised Rebecca and her siblings to know both Yeshua (Jesus) and their Jewish background. She came to believe in Jesus when she was seven. They also instilled in her […]

Heather Silverman, 24, who lives in Columbus, Ohio, grew up in a Messianic Jewish home. Her father is the leader of a Messianic congregation. She says she began to truly follow Yeshua (Jesus) when she was eighteen. “My grandfather and father always had a camera out,” Heather remembers. “Granted they were always taking pictures of […]

My parents are Jewish. I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in New York and attended Hebrew day school. When I was in the second grade, my parents realized I was falling behind other children my age in reading and math. They decided I needed to be in a public school and have Hebrew education […]

David Philipson, 29, was born in North Carolina and currently resides in Southern California. He grew up in a home where both his Jewish mother and gentile father believed in Jesus, and David came to believe in him at a very young age. “I grew up with a ton of Jewish culture and symbolism, but […]

I was born into a beautiful Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, in 1953. My father was a research chemist and my mother a writer. As a child, I was inquisitive about everything and asked all the impossible questions. My parents, I soon realized, did not have all the answers. I spent my childhood focusing […]